HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

entropi

315 karma · joined April 9, 2020

submissionscomments
entropi··on Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives
Using SUVs are definitely worse for safety as well, and it does not require a huge overhaul of the transportation infrastructure, a few new technologies to be invented, replacing ~all the existing cars, etc. etc. But no-one takes the comparatively basically free steps to remove/reduce SUVs.

Lets not forget that its all about the profits, and if we truly want to save lives there are more cost-efficient ways than what some tech sales-people peddle.

entropi··on Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives
You are dismissing this as "unhelpful negativity", but are not addressing in any way the obvious (and rather malicious, I would say) PR play that parent comment points out.

This is exactly the message, and I for one welcome the anti-cool-aid sentiments being very visible in public spaces.

entropi··on X402, a static blog monetization excercise
> This literally can change how we use internet making advertisement economy internet runs on obsolete.

Hmm, so I will pay to see websites that have ads. This may or may not be fine and solve some other problems (like paywalling AI agents), but lets not be naive. It won't replace ads, in most cases it will just be another stream.

entropi··on Mag 7 starting to underperform [pdf]
Yeah but the money I receive is almost completely decoupled from the value I create. In fact, this can only reduce the value of my time since now my expertise is perceived to be commodified.
entropi··on Mag 7 starting to underperform [pdf]
But if they do the work for me, then my time is less valuable. If my time is less valuable, I won't pay more to save more of my time.
entropi··on Hetzner Price Adjustment
> AIslop is of higher quality than devslop on average.

Is it? If by higher quality, you mean commenting properly, sticking to naming conventions etc. I can agree. But to me, AIslop looks like it lacks "intentionality" of code written by devs, no matter how bad they are at naming things and sticking to conventions.

i.e. people who are adequately good at their jobs usually do things for a reason, and they can explain it. Even if you don't find it agreeable, it usually is consistent.

entropi··on AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
Passing judgement on the schadenfreude aside, I don't think its a community moderator's responsibility to make sure the violator's attempts are cost-efficient.
entropi··on xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
I think the point is not difficulty but rather recklessness. I don't think other large players lack the ability or the deep pockets to do the same, but they might be lacking on the recklessness department for whatever reason. That reason, whatever it may be, might be the interesting part here.
entropi··on Cannibalism
Seems correct. Weird thing is, every single piece of software that I use feels like it got shittier in the last couple of years.

But I am not using more software. I mean their source codes might have gotten larger, but the count of tools/services I use is basically the same.

So this feels more like giving up nice handcrafted fountain pens for bic pens. But I am still using a couple pens overall. So no added convenience, just shittier quality.

entropi··on Cannibalism
> We’re so so far away from tools here that are anywhere near being trustworthy and accurate. And yet we (including myself) are chunking out code after code. It’s so bizarre.

I think one more thing this whole LLM charade in the last few years has revealed is that no-one really cares. As long as it "looks" like it works, turns out, its all fine.

entropi··on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars [video]
There are other, more focused (also arguably better at explaining) videos on explaining how it works. Here is one: https://youtu.be/dxmxIsoV_Xo

It took a while and several explanations for it to completely click for me. The e-cvt mechanism does seem to be quite clever and simpler (at least mechanically).

entropi··on The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think
I tend to view this as purely an optimization problem.

Basically all aspects of traditional values, systems in place and the whole lifestyle, established mostly after the agricultural revolution; seems to be laser-focused on increasing surviving offspring.

I feel like it should be obvious that if you take a solution that optimizes almost exclusively for x (surviving offspring), and replace it partially, optimizing for a,b,c (industrial output, female participation to workforce, etc.); you necessarily get a lower x in exchange for higher a,b,c.

Now it looks to me like everyone is trying to increase x back again, but without decreasing a,b,c. It seems obvious to me that you cannot do this (unless you have been doing a terrible job at optimizing before). You have to trade some value off from the other side. But in our current society, I don't see how can this happen.

entropi··on The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs
>Someone needs to be involved in decision making, with real stakes if those decisions are bad.

Why though? I imagine things could also go the "google way" as well. The automated system makes the decision; and you just.. deal with the consequences if that decision is bad. We could just have an extended version of this dynamic as well: 3-4 entities with enough compute owning everything with no responsibilities; and when something goes bad, oh well. It's not like you can go to their competition, who also works the same way.

I think we saw many times that after a certain scale (after becoming, say, too big to fail), there is no bad decision you can't afford.

entropi··on SpaceX files to go public
And how is a colony on mars necessary?
entropi··on The Cognitive Dark Forest
Unless you don't own the data centers yourself, you only get what they allow you you to. And those gatekeepers, lawyers and licencing agreements; while certainly not perfect, did let people monetize their intellectual work. Also, I think it is incredibly naive to think the owners of the compute and the energy won't play the hardest gatekeeper the world has seen, when the conditions become right.
entropi··on Malus – Clean Room as a Service
I think the problem will be with enforcement. To be honest I don't see any way to stop this kind of thing from happening. I predict the slow decline of open source projects, sadly.
entropi··on Executing programs inside transformers with exponentially faster inference
I got the same impression as the parent post. Even if its not AI-generated, the text reads like a politician's speech at a lot of places. Talks a lot, says little.

The idea itself was very cool, so I endured it. But it was not a pleasant read.

entropi··on Apple is fighting for TSMC capacity as Nvidia takes center stage
I mean sure it is fun to pick one company and hate it, but this is not the point being argued here.

But the point here is that a few companies are outbidding everyone else, hoarding shittons of compute and putting it into their data centers, to rent to people. This is effectively taking compute ownership away from consumers and centralizing compute i.e. un-democratising.

Apple outcompeting other companies to put their products into the hands of regular people is vastly different.

entropi··on Everyone in Seattle hates AI
ah, so what you are saying is this: now you can buy your own specialized hardware, which is realistically produced and sold by a single company on earth, compete with ~3 of the largest multinational corporations to do so (consider the ram prices lately, to get a sense of the effect of this competition), spend tens of thousands in the process, and run your 'own' model, which someone spends millions to train and makes it open for some reason (this is not a point about its existence, its about its reliability. I don't think its wise to assume the open models will be roughly in line with SOTA forever). This way, by spending roughly 1-2 orders of magnitude more, you can eliminate a handful of SaaS products that you use.

Sorry, I don't see this happening, at least not for the majority. Even if it does, it would still be arguably centralizing.

entropi··on Everyone in Seattle hates AI
So you are saying now that you can bypass a lot of solutions offered by a mix of small/large providers by using a single solution from a huge provider, this is the opposite of a centralization of power?
entropi··on PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage
Roofs do, though.
entropi··on ChatGPT terms disallow its use in providing legal and medical advice to others
And I feel like the difference between, say;

- Paying for a ticket/dvd/stream to see a Ghibli movie

- Training a model on their work without compensating them, then enabling everyone to copy their art style with ~zero effort, flooding the market and diluting the value of their work. And making money in the process.

should be rather obvious. My only hypothesis so far is that a lot of the people in here have a vested interest in not understanding the outrage, so they don't.

entropi··on ChatGPT terms disallow its use in providing legal and medical advice to others
Hmm. So OpenAI doesn't care about other people's terms, copyrights or any sort of IP; but they get to have their own terms.
entropi··on ChatGPT Atlas
I feel the same way.

Yet people are using AI for therapy, listening to AI-written novels read by AI, gladly watching AI-made slop. There seems to be real actual demand for it. Feels like total insanity to me; but here we are and facts are facts.

I guess whether the emperor is wearing clothes or not never actually mattered.

entropi··on Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?
I am also paying for crunchyroll and trying to support the creators in various ways.

But still, I often find myself watching anime from fansub groups even though I have a legitimate, official way of watching them. Paying for a streaming service that is objectively, significantly worse than even the shittier pirate offerings does make me feel like a fool.

entropi··on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android
I have a couple of friends working at Google. They don't care about this stuff at all. They seem to be completely bought into the "every man for himself" neoliberal worldview. My sample size is obviously small, but judging by the actions of the company, my friends seem not to be the exception.
entropi··on Uncle Sam shouldn't own Intel stock
While your arguments are correct, I don't think they are relevant.

Like, for example, the government could give me a few billion bucks and everything you said would still be correct. I would also spend it, etc. etc.

entropi··on 'Ad Blocking Is Not Piracy' Decision Overturned by Top German Court
Yes, but the same logic doesn't fly for basically any other topic, since German public is very sensitive about their privacy. We need to protect the right to privacy at all costs. Unless if its for copyright enforcement. If it is for copyright enforcement purposes, timeouts and pinky promises about not sharing my ID-associated private data with anyone other than for law enforcement purposes is all we need...
entropi··on 'Ad Blocking Is Not Piracy' Decision Overturned by Top German Court
> Web Environment Integrity was so heavily criticized at the time that it made Google itself backtrack. The same Google that forged ahead with Manifest V3. There is no realistic way the German government could get websites to implement an even worse version of that.

I don't think this is a good comparison, though. Google cannot force people to use WEI -yet-. The government can.

>The whole Web would simply become incompatible with Germany.

I think the ad-supported web would just LOVE this idea and would become compatible with Germany ASAP.

> So this would be trivial to bypass on a technical level

I don't think so. Don't get me wrong, there will always be a way for the tech-savvy. But all the trivial ways can very well be blocked.

> unacceptable on a social level

In Germany, you cannot install security cameras in a building unless all the owners agree, on grounds of privacy. But the ISPs keep all of your traffic logs, law firms get these logs, and mass-send cease-and-desist letters using automated systems. This is also not particularly acceptable, but it happens everyday and looks like it is very enforceable.

Lets not be naive and think this is unenforceable on the grounds of being "socially unacceptable".

entropi··on 'Ad Blocking Is Not Piracy' Decision Overturned by Top German Court
While it is completely absurd, I don't see why it would be non-enforceable. They can very well enforce it.

Here is one way to do it: they could take a page out of google's Web Environment Integrity proposal and make it illegal to serve any page within Germany unless the integrity is proven. Done. VPNs are problematic? Ban them. Seems very enforceable to me.

Why do you think it is un-enforceable?

Page 1 of 4Next →